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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603049">unsex me here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomcruisin/pseuds/tomcruisin'>tomcruisin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Macbeth - Shakespeare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Backstory, F/M, Gen, Inspired by Shakespeare, Like I’m not kidding, Misogyny, Scotland, a lot of it, your father was a weak man</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:35:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,555</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomcruisin/pseuds/tomcruisin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Your father was a weak man. Your father was a weak man, and then he died.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>unsex me here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Come you spirits, That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.”</em>
</p><p>(Act 1, Scene 5, lines 38-9)</p><p> </p><p>They say, when you were born, you tore through your mother like a famine upon a ripe countryside and leeched every ounce of life from her frail, female body. That you beleaguered your mother’s figure and as soon as you had exited the orifice from which all babes emerge, your Lady Mother’s body was limp and cold. They say when you were born, the world held its breath as your mother exhaled her last; and then you wailed: clear, loud, and true, as though you were the one being murdered, and not your dear, sweet, poor, late mother.</p><p>You hear all these things from the mouth of a firsthand witness. The crone with a warty face and a hunched back whom they call the midwife tells you the story of your birth and many other births besides. She tells you, <em>you</em>, who is still young and angry and brimming with curiosity, how your mother had bled out before your father’s own eyes and how your Lord Father, sniveling and weak as he is, had still found it in himself to love you. That he had taken the squalling, red babe in his arms and cooed at you, nevermind that you had just killed his wife. The midwife, who you know by no other title because you have never bothered to learn it, would then open her cracked lips and tell you just how fortunate you are. The midwife has seen many births in which the woman died and the babe lived, but the father was so befallen with hurt over his wife’s passing that he speared the child through or smothered it in its slumber.</p><p>But you do not feel fortunate. You feel angry at your father for being as weak as he always is. You wished he did not have the audacity to love you even though you murdered the woman he loved. You wished he had speared you or smothered you or drowned you like he would an unruly cat, because then he would not be so weak. Then he would not be so womanly and sentimental and perhaps the common folk would not whisper behind his back and scorn their Thane. Perhaps he would not be so quick to drink and whore, and your mother’s death would be avenged at last.</p><p>You know the midwife is one of those who whisper about your weak father in secret; her beady black eyes and her raspy, cracked voice hold no love for you. You are glad of it, too many are quick to grovel and even quicker to offer false flatteries, all the while hoping that your insipid father will see them and praise them, thus proving himself even weaker. You may even prefer the crone midwife to your governess, who has soft eyes and a soft will and thinks she is your mother because your father has bedded her. At least the midwife does not pretend to like you.</p><p>You may hate your father, who is more a woman than a man in nature, but you think you hate your governess even more. You hate most women, not that you’ve met many, but you have been forced to exchange pleasantries with few a Thane’s daughter and find them absolutely intolerable. Their mannerisms irritate you, their mewling and tittering makes you want to throw yourself from the highest tower in Scotland, and worst of all, their unfailing ability to do absolutely nothing is what confounds you. They lack in ambition and cunning, and you hate them.</p><p>Had you been born a son instead of a daughter, you think you may have forgiven your father for not killing you at the wetnurse’s breast.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>—</p><p>When you meet your maternal grandfather for the first time, you think you may love him best out of your entire family, small as it is. He is a Thane, like your father, but that is where the similarities between them end. He is tall, bearded, and imposing, and you are positive that the common people would not dare insult him under their breaths or even over their hearths in the privacy of their homes. You are sure that he does not bed his daughter’s governess and drink till his face grows red in pallor. His entire presence commands respect, and you are more than willing to give it.</p><p>And, he does not love you on sight like your sickening father does. When he looks at you, you are a far cry from the seductress who will ensnare the Lord Macbeth and the ambitious woman who will mastermind the plot to kill a king. You are a wisp of a girl, coltish and scrawny, gangly where you will one day be regal and elegant. No one knows this yet, of course, least of all your grandsire.</p><p>He looks at you, and raises an eyebrow in almost distaste, and you can hear his inner monologue as though he were speaking the words aloud. <em>This is the child that tore my daughter apart?</em> This makes you absolutely giddy. Finally, someone who was angry on your mother’s behalf. Finally, a man would avenge his beautiful wife, slaughtered on the birthing bed. Someone who understood how to wield power and would have smothered any child who dared kill his Lady Wife. Someone who you would have no cause to be ashamed of. Someone who did not aim to please, but took as he pleased. You wished you had been his daughter instead.</p><p>You resolve that if you could not be your grandfather’s daughter, you would be the wife of a man with the same commanding demeanor. You don’t intend to be a docile wife; it’s unfortunate that you have to be a wife at all, but you know a woman’s ascent to power begins on her wedding day, especially if she is married to the right man. Men only trust men. You are no fool, and you know you will never be regarded as an equal among men in power. Your own father even had the nerve to condescend to you, the gall of him! But because you are a daughter, and not a son, he has that right, weak man or not. When you marry, you will ensure that your husband is no such weak man, but he will be yours to maneuver in whatever direction you so please.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>—</p><p>Your father’s death comes as no surprise to you. He had a terrible cough for years, since you were a child, and whenever he had hacked and snorted, you had felt embarrassment rather than pity. When your mother was alive, the midwife told you, she would complain and complain about your father’s cough. Her complaints would be met by the back of your father’s hand (even weak men have short tempers), and she would not complain again for a long while.</p><p>If your husband struck you, you would have made sure that he never did so again. You would take him between your legs and make him regret it; guilt is a foreign emotion to you at this age. Perhaps that is why when it wormed its way into your brain when you were a Queen, it infected you so horridly.</p><p>When the light fades from your father’s eyes, the priest who had done his final rites looked at you with something akin to pity, and it makes you angry. He says, Your father was such a strong man, and you are angrier. Strong? Your father was a weak man.</p><p><em>Your father was a weak man,</em> you think, and something in you recoils at the thought. <em>Your father was a weak man, and then he died.</em></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>-</p><p>Years after, when you are no longer a tiny bird of a girl but nearly a woman grown, your monthly courses come and you are overjoyed. A lesser woman would weep at the prospect of leaving her home, but not you. You relish the idea of leaving your home for the Scottish court. As a daughter of a Thane, it is your duty to secure a betrothal. You will not be without suitors, news of your father’s silver tongued, beautiful daughter have reached the ears of many a great Scottish Lord.</p><p>Before you leave, you watch the midwife snap the neck of a hen in her grimy, straw-roofed hut. The flesh contorts between her fingers, and then it is dead. “You have to do it quick, girl,” she said, looking at you (which you will later learn is an artifice; just because someone is looking at you doesn’t mean they’re actually seeing you. When you marry a man whose mind will one day betray him, he will look at you and not see you, and it will make no difference then, either.) “You have to do it quick,” she intones, and suddenly, it doesn’t sound as though she’s talking about the hen at all.</p><p>Many, many years later, your husband will kill a monarch. He is not a weak man, not like your father, you’ve made sure of that. He will come to you, hands bloodied, and something between you will change, and for a second, you can almost imagine it’s chicken’s blood on his palms and not the blood of your king.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>We read Macbeth in English &amp;&amp; I wanted to write a backstory for Lady Macbeth because she is kind of like awesome and also she deserved better like why didn’t William even give her a name</p></blockquote></div></div>
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